We who still practice the journalistic craft in the shattered remains of American newsrooms have developed a particularly high regard for David Simon, the former Baltimore Sun reporter and creator of the HBO series The Wire.

Simon may technically deal in the realm of entertainment, but the entertainment industry is–for better or worse–the definitional force in the media these days. And a greater extent than anyone in media, Simon gets it, which is to say that he understands the threat that the decline of newspapering and the ensuing collapse of journalism poses for civic life and American democracy.

He used The Wire to portray the decline of a major daily newspaper and the damage done to the major urban center that relied on that had–before the layoffs came–counted on that newspaper’s reporters to keep an eye on crooked politicians and corrupt corporate interests.

So when Simon was called to testify before the Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the future of journalism that was convened Wednesday by Massachusetts Senator John Kerry–who is justifiably concerned about the potential closing of the Boston Globe–it was good news.

Kerry, who has always been more interested in media issues than most senators, arrived with some weighty quotes but not much else. The 2004 Democratic presidential nominee mused about how: “The words of Joseph Pulitzer are still true–our republic and its press will rise or fall together.”

When newspaper chains began cutting personnel and content, their industry was one of the most profitable yet discovered by Wall Street money. We know now–because bankruptcy has opened the books–that the Baltimore Sun was eliminating its afternoon edition and trimming nearly 100 editors and reporters in an era when the paper was achieving 37 percent profits. In the years before the internet deluge, the men and women who might have made the Sun a more essential vehicle for news and commentary–something so strong that it might have charged for its product online–they were being ushered out the door so that Wall Street could command short-term profits in the extreme.

Such short-sighted arrogance rivals that of Detroit in the 1970s, when automakers–confident that American consumers were mere captives–offered up Chevy Vegas, and Pacers and Gremlins without the slightest worry that mediocrity would be challenged by better-made cars from Germany or Japan.

In short, my industry butchered itself and we did so at the behest of Wall Street and the same unfettered, free-market logic that has proved so disastrous for so many American industries. And the original sin of American newspapering lies, indeed, in going to Wall Street in the first place.

When locally-based, family-owned newspapers like the Sun were consolidated into publicly-owned newspaper chains, an essential dynamic, an essential trust between journalism and the communities served by that journalism was betrayed.

That is a diagnosis of what Simon refers to as “what went wrong in American newspapering,” rather than a prescription for curing the ills of the industry.

Simon frankly acknowledges that there may not be a cure. Kerry referred to newspapers as “endangered.” Simon said, “I don’t know if it isn’t too late already for American newspapering. So much talent has been taken from newsrooms over the last two decades and the ambitions of the craft are now so crude, small-time and stunted that it’s hard to imagine a turnaround.”

Some of Simon’s fellow panelists inclined toward the notion that the answer can be found on the Internet. “The future of quality journalism is not dependent on the future of newspapers,” declared Arianna Huffington, whose Huffington Post project is making a go at online journalism.

But Simon was bluntly dubious. “The day I run into a Huffington Post reporter at a Baltimore zoning board hearing, is the day that I will be confident that we have actually reached some sort of balance,” he snapped, in the hearing’s ultimate “ouch” moment.

The key is to find a way to make sure journalism survives even if newspapers do not, and, frankly neither Simon nor Huffington–nor any of their fellow presenters on Wednesday–had much to offer in this regard.

Simon’s entertainment of ill-thought plans to turn newspapers into toothless non-profits is disturbing. And his suggestion that big media companies that he admits have “butchered” the industry be given the gift of relaxed antitrust rules–so that they can commit the butchery on a larger and more coordinated scale–is downright dangerous.

But there will be no cure until there is a proper diagnosis. And Simon’s great accomplishment Wednesday was to deliver that diagnosis in compelling testimony to the Senate.

That testimony is worth reading in its entirety. But here is what editors refer to as “the nut graf”–the section that explains the point of the broader story:

Wall Street and free-market logic, having been a destructive force in journalism over the last few decades, are not now suddenly the answer. Raw, unencumbered capitalism is never the answer when a public trust or public mission is at issue. If the last quarter century has taught us anything–and admittedly, with too many of us, I doubt it has–it’s that free-market capitalism, absent social imperatives and responsible regulatory oversight, can produce durable goods and services, glorious profits, and little of lasting social value. Airlines, manufacturing, banking, real estate–is there a sector of the American economy where laissez-faire theories have not burned the poor, the middle class and the consumer, while bloating the rich and mortgaging the very future of the industry, if not the country itself? I’m pressed to think of one.

There will be time for the debate about solutions. For now, it is not just useful but necessary to be clear about the cause of the crisis in American journalism. On this point, what Simon says is spot on.

It wasn’t the Internet.

It wasn’t the current economic downtown.

It was a lousy newspaper ownership model that saw civic and democratic values replaced by the rapacious greed and commercial calculations of big media companies.

Vast Right-Wing ConspiracyConfirmed Right Before Your Eyes(Witness for the Prosecution, April 13, 2009)

Paul Krugman reminds me to remind you that the VRWC is still fully operational. In fact you can see it playing out RIGHT NOW in “The Great (Fake) TeaBag Caper“.

[I]t turns out that the tea parties don’t represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They’re AstroTurf (fake grass roots) events, manufactured by the usual suspects. In particular, a key role is being played by FreedomWorks, an organization run by Richard Armey, the former House majority leader, and supported by the usual group of right-wing billionaires. And the parties are, of course, being promoted heavily by Fox News.But that’s nothing new, and AstroTurf has worked well for Republicans in the past. The most notable example was the “spontaneous” riot back in 2000 — actually orchestrated by G.O.P. strategists — that shut down the presidential vote recount in Florida’s Miami-Dade County.

This is, of course, precisely the technique they used to drown the newspapers of 1983 in letters and demonstrations and (canned) phone calls demanding that they stop “picking on” St Ronnie. Paul may only go back as far as 2000 but I go all the way back to the beginning.

Point is, should you have any doubts about the way the conspiracy operates – or about whether it’s a conspiracy at all – or merely be curious to see it in action, it is happening right now, right here, right in front of us. In the past it was possible for them to deny there was any conspiracy – Viguirie denied for years that he had anything to do with the Reagan astroturf and the proof was all “proprietary” and thus under wraps. Here, it is impossible to miss. The RW is so desperate to convince people it’s still alive that they’re pulling out all the stops.

Free of its protective wrapper, you can see the way Roger Ailes operates as he uses his communications device to invade the public square with phony news stories featuring totted-up media whores and RW flacks ‘n’ hacks posing as angry citizens. The G(F)TBC, like all the “movements” in the history of the VRWC, is strictly top-down stuff, no bottom-up grassrootsing for them – can’t trust the mob to be on-message, you know. They might decide rich folks ought to pay more if you left it to the likes of them. Digby notes the origins of the group that started the TBers on their merry way, FreedomWorks.

Stealing a page from MoveOn.org‘s successful organizing playbook, the leaders of FreedomWorks – a complete merger of the conservative think-tanks Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) and Empower America – hope to conduct massive get out the vote and political education campaigns in the swing states on behalf of President George W. Bush.The two groups decided to merge because there was “an overlap in issues between the two organization,” Shawn Small, the Director of Policy at Empower America, told me in a telephone interview. It was an opportunity to bring together Empower America, which Small characterized as a “grasstops” organization driven by such inside the beltway “superstars” as William Bennett, Vin Weber and Jean Kirkpatrick and CSE’s “grassroots” following.

Will FreedomWorks be successful? Maybe, maybe not, but it is sure to be controversial with longtime Republican Party operative Matt Kibbe at the helm.

***

The leaders of FreedomWorks have all been around the Beltway a number of times. Former House Majority Leader, Texas Republican congressman Dick Armey, C. Boyden Gray, onetime legal counsel to Bush’s father and chairman of the Committee for Justice, an organization about to launch a campaign on behalf of Bush’s right wing judicial appointees, and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary and failed vice-presidential candidate, Jack Kemp, will serve as the Co-Chairmen of the organization.

That kind of “grassroots” has almost no grass and its roots were all built in a factory using scads of petroleum products.

So if you’re one of those who thought the VRWC was some sort of lefty paranoia, here’s your chance to watch, out in the open, the manipulation we’ve (I’ve) been talking about for 30 years that derailed the once-very-healthy business of journalism. If you’re one of those who suspected or even knew but never actually saw it up-close-and-personal because it always scuffled around in those dark corners and scuttled away whenever a light got turned on, now’s your chance.

It’s kind of fun to watch if you don’t let yourself dwell too much on the fact that its avowed purpose is the destruction of democracy and its replacement by an oligarchy of plutocrats. Other than that, it’s a laff riot.